An Essay On Peer Review
Can you name a single research project that is going on at your local university? With publicly funded research, don’t you think there should be some sort of database set up with this information? You can, of course, Google-Scholar search for professors and their research. But what about the undergraduate research? Most of those hypotheses are forever suspended with the toss of a graduation cap. Even when a paper does make it to peer review, it will join an endless queue of other papers that some professor will be forced to read in the spare time they don’t have. Clearly there is a lot wrong here and this entire process of peer review determines where funding goes and who gets tenure. It needs to be taken more seriously and it needs a facelift, and I generally don’t tend to advocate for those.
Many scientists made their breakthrough only to end up quite reluctant to reveal their discovery, whether for fear of persecution, like Galileo, or due to uncertainty. Who knows if Darwin would’ve ever published had it not been for Alfred Russell Wallace? However, in this day and age, we should be able to post this information quickly and widely. We should be able to share ideas, give credit where it is due, and have full visibility into our public education system so we can make amendments as a collective. I’ll back up now and explain the premise because I swear this is all relevant to a single train of thought.
Why is there no database of the research going on at each university? Why do I select a school based on its prestige or its location and not based on the professor and the work they are doing in their lab? It wouldn’t be impossible to compile this information, unless one person made the full attempt. There is no standard system for navigating university websites, but I do wonder if Discord (the app) could help with something like this. Each school could create something like a Discord server and even branch out into the different departments having their own separate server, as well. These servers are easy to link back to and reference and you can join as many as you’d like.
When peer review became the standard, there was no internet so there seemed to be no better way to sort the science by good and bad. Now, what all went in to determining what was a good paper probably had less to do with the project and more to do with the people the scientist knew. Still, it truly was representative in the past of someone’s academic achievement for the most part. Nowadays, it’s less obvious that grades are an actual measure of anything other than an ability to follow instructions. Peer review has dissolved into a popularity contest at best and an administrative nightmare at worst.
The process of peer review creates several problems that are resolvable if we choose to recognize and address them. One of those issues lies within the hands of the gate-keepers who review grant applications, journal submissions, and conference abstracts. The consequences of individual-level biases were notably highlighted in the grievance studies affair. It is worth a Google search, and if you have time go ahead and watch the full JRE interview (Episode #1191) between Joe Rogan, James Lindsay and Peter Bhogossian (Helen Pluckrose was absent from the interview but participated in the scandal). It was an eloquent exposé that revealed how simple it is to get a paper published in a discipline like Gender Studies versus a well-established science, such as Biology. Had it been truly just for the sake of comedy it would’ve been hilarious, but the truth is: it’s actually quite alarming.
One might think the best way to resolve the issue with gatekeeping is to make it more stringent a process, but the ramifications of that may be just as pernicious. In some disciplines, such as the sciences, there may be something valuable in a study that is seemingly uninteresting or one that results in no significant difference between the control and the experimental variables. For example, imagine an experiment set up to test whether cows lie down when it rains. Observation of haphazardly chosen cows at several locations provide that on average, they are just as likely to lie down as they are to stay standing when it rains. But there may still be something to that hypothesis that was not revealed by the experiment conducted. Such a paper may be less likely to get published or even written up at all and the real casualty is that of an idea that could have sparked some other experiment or hypothesis.
This example may seem trite, but there are implications to this reflexive disposal of curiosity that could very well be the traffic jam which has slowed down progress. Manuscripts clutter the desks of reviewers and have clogged the chute to something necessary for those who are pursuing a career in academia. Meanwhile newer disciplines with newer ideas are able to flood the airways with publication after publication of actual steaming garbage (I’m glaring at you Gender Studies).
There may be some merit to at least providing some insight into what research is going on at our institutions, even at the undergraduate level. Compiling this sort of information into a database that is accessible to the public, the universities, or at least available through a paid membership is a daunting endeavor. Even this approach does not begin to cover all of the research proposals that could be expanded upon by an expert, but it at least allows us to see which hypotheses won in order to go to paper. It turns out one of the greatest human traits is innovation and the process of peer review has come to serve as a barrier to entry into the realm of idea sharing. This doesn’t mean the answer is lowering our standards, rather we should be more objective in where our trust lies.
As opposed to a showcase for the best work, the realm of ideas should look more like The Lyceum; a philosopher’s garden with several budding ideas to tend to and many more to prune. Having a database allows a search to be filtered by key-words such as: model organism, method, equipment, etc. It can even improve the already existing peer review model by creating more interaction. Imagine a list of research titles with their corresponding abstracts could be upvoted by people that are actually interested in the field of study.
In the age of being connected and after several months spent in quarantine, it’s become even more apparent that the internet is an incredible tool for sharing ideas. While every hypothesis may not be a Nobel winner, there is value in the exchange. For as long as we can, we should share as many ideas as possible because the only way to combat bad ideas is with more ideas. If there is anything that this year has taught us, it’s that we should be able to choose what we trust and all of the information to make that decision should be available.
Sources:
Jukola, S. (2017). A Social Epistemological Inquiry into Biases in Journal Peer Review. Perspectives on Science, 25(1), 124–148.
Thomas H. P. Gould. (2013). Do We Still Need Peer Review? : An Argument for Change. Scarecrow Press.
